Making a Unified Communications Business Case: 6 Essential Benefits
In today's business climate, organizations are faced with the choice to drive innovation using technology or fall behind. Ninety-six percent of executives believe digital transformation is crucial. While exploring emerging technologies is critical, upgrading the communications tools you use every day should not be underestimated.
Relying solely on email and phone services could limit your organization's potential for mobility, cross-functional collaboration, and providing an innovative customer experience. Unified Communications can bring your organization's communication to the cloud, unlocking remarkable agility and best-of-class features.
Six Essential Benefits of Unified Communications:
- Cost Savings
- Improved Decision Making and Information Access
- Processing Time Reduction
- Increased Innovation and Collaboration
- Consolidated Costs and Reduced Carrier Communication Expenses
- Benefits of OpEx vs. CapEx
Making a Unified Communications Business Case: What Are Unified Communications?
Let’s begin our unified communications business case with a definition. What are unified communications? Unified communications are a process of integrating multiple communication channels like voice, internal messaging, collaboration and video calling into a single, unified solution.
Internal and customer exchanges are improved simultaneously by connecting your workforce under a single, collaborative platform. With benefits like improved response times and ease of access, over 75 percent of users experience heightened productivity across multi-site locations with unified communications.
There are various benefits of UCaaS beyond just effective communication and cost savings, which are the most widely-understood benefits. If you're building a business case to convince stakeholders to make the switch, consider each of these key Unified Communications benefits:
1. Cost Savings
When everything is brought together, there are several hard-dollar savings associated with Unified Communications. For instance, video-conferencing features mean employees may no longer need to travel for annual meetings, saving the company thousands of dollars for expenses, as much as 25 percent of total travel costs.
A single manager can oversee multiple operations with virtual collaboration tools, both onsite and remotely. This could reduce staffing costs as well as miscommunication of expectations.
UC could even make it possible for fewer IT staff to be needed on hand to manage cloud services. These direct savings to businesses are among the top reasons companies are switching to unified communications services.
According to researchers, while savings can vary significantly depending on your organization's needs, former communication tools, and international calling, organizations generally can expect to save around 30 percent on UCaaS over alternatives.
To learn more about how Unified Communications can improve customer interactions and support employee satisfaction through bring-your-own-device (BYOD) offerings, check out 11 Valuable Business Benefits of Unified Communications as a Service.
2. Improved Decision Making and Information Access
Unified communications can enable your company to incorporate the people needed to make effective decisions.
Remote employees can be included in important discussions in real-time without much effort in prearranged scheduling through video conferencing and real-time social collaboration tools.
Time-sensitive materials will no longer sit in a pile of to-do work being passed from one member of management to the next, thanks to improved features for file sharing and keyword-based search.
More insights are detailed in 5 Reasons Omnichannel Communications is Critical for Enterprises.
3. Processing Time Reduction
Reducing latency within communications will effectively improve response time, leaving employees open to new tasks. Team members will be more effective on an individual level because they will no longer need to search separate platforms for what they need.
Research shows that implementing a unified communications solution can improve response times by up to 20 percent, allowing team members to take on more business transactions.
Team members can reach the right person at the right time without leaving countless voicemails, writing endless emails, or sending messages to an unmanned inbox or chat channel. Projects can be processed faster because of the ability to push them through the correct channels without the hassle of spotty communications.
Learn more about how real organizations drive real process improvement with UCaaS in Unified Communication and Collaboration Tools: Make the Cloud Work for You.
4. Innovation and Collaboration
Collaborative projects can be a breeze, even with remote team members. Whether in the next office or on a different continent, unified communication brings employees together with unique instant messaging options, optional screen sharing, and voice and video calling. With the ability to utilize all members regardless of location, specific skills and attributes can be matched accordingly to encourage innovative and profitable ideas.
Learn more in How Unified Communications is Fueling Team Collaboration and Business Innovation.
5. Consolidated Costs and Reduced Carrier Communication Expenses
If you are still using a traditional carrier, internal communications could be responsible for up to 30 percent to 40 percent of long distance charges.
Utilizing Unified Communications could greatly reduce calling costs, and with the help of video and voice calling services, you could lower them even more. Your long-distance and international calling rates will drop drastically by treating voice calls as data.
Another hidden cost is that of multiple licensing. If your company is paying for two different platforms with the same basic capabilities, you are paying double for the same services.
By implementing a set of communication tools within your business, you will effectively cut the costs of unnecessary licensure. Finally, consolidating your communication tools with a single carrier can enable your organization to achieve faster, simpler troubleshooting and superior reliability.
Discover how to identify UCaaS vendors who offer the best value for your investment in Are You Paying Too Much for Unified Communication Services?
6. OpEx vs. CapEx
It is important to consider more than just the upfront cost of unified communications. There is more than one way monthly costs could be cut by upgrading to Unified Communications. Benefits include but aren’t limited to:
- Reduced cost of applications (multiple applications for web services, video calls, voice services, fax services, and more)
- Reduced risk of technology obsolescence
- Reduced IT personnel needed to manage cloud services.
- The presence of instant messaging reduces the instance of “phone tag.”
While the initial costs of unified communications may seem daunting, it is important to remember what the service provides a business. Your business can use the services provided to effectively cut costs and gain revenue through increased productivity and decreased need for staff or technological replacements.
Full info on estimating how much you could save through the Operational Expenditure (OpEx) pricing structure of UCaaS versus the Capital Expenditure (CapEx) of an on-premises deployment, look into How to Accurately Measure the ROI of Unified Communications.
Making a Unified Communications Business Case: Is UCaaS Worth It?
Unified communication services are not going anywhere—and for good reason.
The use of UCaaS is expected to grow more than 15 percent in the next three years because of the advanced features and capabilities offered.
Integrating remote employees into daily business transactions and decisions can effectively cut costs and improve innovation and collaboration, reducing processing time and carrier expenses.
Throw in consolidated management tactics and the possibility of return on investment, and you’re looking at a true game-changer for your business.
For more information about choosing the best Unified Communications provider and services for your business, check out our resource, 10 Questions To Ask Before You buy Unified Communications as a Service.
